


Sewn in the Lining of Me

by psiten



Category: Tokyo Babylon, X/1999
Genre: Angst, M/M, Moments of Transition, Mourning, Post-Tokyo Babylon, Sumeragi Subaru is a Bad Role Model and Imitating His Behavior is Not Recommended
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 19:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psiten/pseuds/psiten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He didn't owe anyone explanations.  His sister had woken him up.  Had thrust him into his life again.  Even if the way he chose to use that life wasn't what she would have wanted, the choice was no one's but his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sewn in the Lining of Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FaustianAspirant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaustianAspirant/gifts).



_As to who I am now if you’re prompted to ask_  
I’m the ghost of my future and the sum of my past  
\-- "Small Mended Corners", Talis Kimberley 

     Red taffeta crinkled between his ungloved fingers, the fabric stiff and shining, less smooth against his skin than he would have expected but not rough and scratchy like the tulle underneath. While she had lived, Subaru hadn't touched his sister with his own hands -- not in so many years that the memory of her hand in his had faded to dust. Now he could never replace it. Brushing slowly through a closet of clothes she had worn, had designed and sewn herself, might well be the nearest he would ever come to filling that gap.

     Before he'd reached the fourth dress, he knew the attempt was pointless. There was nothing left here of the person he'd known, just the textures of fabrics and the ridges of seams. His sister had been the warmth, the resistance, the spirit inside. A few outfits hollowed on hangers like autumn leaves about to fall left him with nothing but distance. "Hokuto" wasn't here.

     "These should all go to storage at the main house," Subaru told the assistants Grandmother had sent to help him pack up his sister's rooms. The store-bought clothes in the dresser and the first closet he'd donate to those in need, but her personal creations shouldn't go on a rack for the bristling swarms of humanity to handle, even if she wasn't in any part of them anymore. While he watched in silence, the colorful explosions of frilly skirts, animal shapes, and gossamer wings were closed up inside black garment bags and wheeled out, leaving the closet an empty shell of nothing at all.

     On her nightstand he found a bright teal and gold telephone with the buttons arranged like an old-fashioned rotary next to a rack of half-empty nail polish bottles and a row manicure tools. Chrome-smooth nail clippers, rough emery boards, other things he didn't have names for. In the drawer, he found her nail polish remover, lotion, and a bag of cotton puffs torn open. She must have spent hours lounging on the bed, doing her nails, talking on the phone with one of the dozens of people she seemed to meet wherever she went. Pushing the cotton puffs aside, Subaru found his sister's little black book of phone numbers. With a twist of his mouth that veered toward a smile, he remembered the day she'd bought it. She'd insisted it had to be a little black book. Nothing else would do.

     He took it, and walked for the door. There was nothing left to check in her bedroom.

     "The rest of that can go in the trash, and the furniture can go on the truck."

     None of these things meant anything without her here. His sister was gone.

     Subaru paused in the hallway between the bedroom and the front parlor, flipping backwards through gold-edged pages of names and numbers. Right now, at this moment, one of these people was probably wondering where that strange, bubbly girl was -- whether she'd drop in today with a cake and a song. No one had been able to predict her, but it had been so long now that his sister would've been missed. Subaru saw Yuuya-kun here, his name written with a note that he liked pudding. The singer with the beautiful smile was in here, too, and all of his sister's friends from school. Tomorrow he'd call every number and invite them all to the public memorial service. He didn't know how he could face their voices, their eyes, their presences, but they deserved to know that she was gone. They deserved to say goodbye.

     Even if he didn't know how. Subaru hadn't told his Grandmother how sure he was that his sister had gone to die in his place so that he could live, but he believed she was aware. Her old but clear eyes seemed to scold him for thinking that was the last thing he'd wanted. He would rather have died than live in a world where his sister was gone and Seishirou-san... had made it clear how insig--

     ...

     His fingers trembled as he saw the next well-worn leaf in the little black book, and he didn't turn the page. Subaru recalled every stroke of every character on the lines that read, "Sei-chan!!" with hearts sketched all around -- only one at first, after the exclamation points, the rest drawn within a month of regular social calls. The veterinary office had been so close by, and yet they'd managed to miss each other for so long, even while Seishirou-san had cared enough to _hunt_. That was Tokyo. So full of people, it made you alone. Subaru wished for a moment that the page would spite him with a papercut, but it left him whole, and he left it unturned, closing the book completely and slipping it into his pocket.

     The memory of looking into eyes he'd grown to love as they'd made him feel more worthless than dust was something he didn't need to explain to the people helping him today. He didn't owe anyone explanations. His sister had woken him up. Had thrust him into his life again. Even if the way he chose to use that life wasn't what she would have wanted, the choice was no one's but his own. He would find the Sakurazukamori. He would consider that man a murderer, and as the head of the Sumeragi clan would punish him for his crimes. Maybe then, Subaru thought, he'd be able to believe that the Seishirou-san who'd dried his tears had never been real, that the voice telling him to forgive himself had been a lie. He could destroy the illusion of a man he'd loved even as he killed the specter he couldn't bring himself to hate, despite that man killing his sister and leaving him to fester here. Hatred would be better than whatever he felt now. Hatred would be something.

     At least the mirrors and the windows all had cloth draped over them. To see his sister's face looking back at him, haunted and heartsick in his own reflection -- he wouldn't have been able to stand it. His assistants very decorously declined to notice him still his tears with a breath. Air shuddered out of his throat, dampness trailed down his cheeks while his eyes stung, and then he made himself calm again. He had to be the strong one now. There was no one left to hold him up. He was alive, but he was alone.

     Why had his sister decided that this was better? Would he ever understand?

     But that didn't matter. All that mattered was that she had decided. She had known what she wanted. She'd made this happen. Despite that, she couldn't force him to go on with his life. He didn't owe this to anyone, and his sister never would have asked him to do this for her. He had his own reasons to keep living.

     Where his parlor was an open room with blank walls, ready to serve however was required, his sister's space had art on every wall and plants that had died during the month when the state of her belongings had been no one's greatest concern. Nothing was left out as if she planned to pick it up later. She'd probably cancelled all of her dates and appointments, too, before she left to find Seishirou-san. If he were being honest she'd probably broken her ties without a hint of joy in her voice, but he imagined her laughing, putting people at ease as she told them something had come up. He was allowed to lie to himself and see her happy.

     Her coffee table sitting in the middle of western-style plush chairs had fashion magazines stacked in one corner and a stained glass tea set ready for use. Subaru could almost hear echoes of her playing hostess, scolding him for skipping breakfast of a morning, praising Seishirou-san for drinking his tea like a gentleman, cooing over the latest street styles printed on glossy pages. He picked up the cup that'd always been his, with a swirl of bright green intruding on a pink panel, and felt it for once -- cool, smooth, fragile.

     A glass cup.

     As easy to shatter as a life.

     Subaru fought the urge to throw it at the curtained windows. His hand did shake, cup rattling on saucer as he put it down in a rush and didn't bother to right it when it fell, but this time he didn't crack. He didn't throw up. He didn't lose himself. He walked away to stare at the slim bookshelf in the corner and wait for his mind to still so the titles would come into focus.

     Photo monographs of Paris, Milan, New York. Children's fairy tales. A few detective novels, Takamine Hideko's autobiography, a retrospective on five centuries of European fashion. Leaning loose on one of the shelves was the cookbook Seishirou-san had given her this past New Year. The only New Year they'd spent together. How a world could change so much in just a year, and again in just a series of moments... He'd asked in silent whispers and screams, but his heart never answered. Instead, he saw the world with hideous clarity, with all the veils of meaning lying in shredded tatters at his feet. Through the raw edges of his heart, he studied Seishirou-san's gift: a book he used to page through, wondering which recipe Seishirou-san had liked so much that he'd picked this to give.

     It was only a book.

     It was nothing but a book.

     He found his voice, telling the nearest person, "These can go to the library." The words came out more smoothly than he would have imagined they could, with his throat as sore as it was from making himself breathe or clenching back a sob.

     Behind him, someone was boxing everything away, removing old things from all their lives forever. In front of him, he saw his sister's writing desk with pencils and purple-ink pens sticking out of a pen holder shaped like a crown. Pink polka-dotted stationery pages and blank cards peeked out of a folder tied shut with ribbon. Ceramic elephant bookends held all of her motley scrapbooks upright in the back corner. He traced their plasticised spines with one finger, pulling at random a blue one covered with cartoon clocks.

     She'd decorated the first page with pictures of a camera-shy boy he recognized as himself, trimmed in colored paper cut with scalloped edges. The picture wasn't from so long ago, but he felt like he was looking at a different person. After that came an article about a high-profile exorcism he'd done that didn't mention the ghost's name had been Aiko. His sister had written, "I dragged Subaru to the beach!!" in bright markers all over the next page, and followed it with a score of photos where the two of them looked happy on towels on the sand. He thought he remembered that day. His sister had worn pink. He'd felt ridiculous wearing nothing but his swim trunks and his gloves, so she'd made him a yellow cover-up jacket.

     There are no gloves now. There will never be gloves again. He won't hide.

     As he turned the page, the words, "Everyone goes on a picnic!" writ large faded in his vision, because he was face to face with man who was wearing a carefree smile, here with glasses and two good eyes, before the _incident_ , before the change that -- ... Could Subaru ever really believe that it hadn't been his own fault, what Seishirou-san had...?

     Yes.

     Yes, he could. He could believe that. The shaking in his hands stopped as he traced the line of the man's chin. Every part of him was so still, he felt outside of himself and terrified by the calm certainty filling him up. He couldn't take the blame for what Seishirou-san had done when he'd been a killer for so long, when he'd set the terms of his game years before he'd been the man Subaru had fallen in love with.

     The man who'd lied to him, Subaru reminded himself. The man who'd killed his sister. It hurt to see that face, like an iron weight crushing his chest until he couldn't breathe. He should have known Seishirou-san would be in here when he saw the age he'd been in the first pictures. That much was sure. Maybe he'd kept turning pages because he'd wanted to know... if he was still in love with the person who would have murdered him on a whim, who'd forgotten him on another, who'd _killed his sister_ with a more honest sort of smile than his picture wore.

     Maybe.

     That couldn't matter now. That was what he had to tear out of his heart.

     Detaching the paper corners that held the image down, Subaru collected his voice -- in measured, clean, unbroken tones to the entire room as he fixed his eyes on the line where the desk met the wall -- to say, "I'd like everyone to leave." The small sounds of action stopped all around him. There had been no voices to begin with, and now the only sound came from a few birds chattering as they flew past the window. The room felt heavy with everyone's uncertainty about how to take his request. His grandmother must have told them never to leave him alone.

     Subaru looked up at the two men paused with a dresser in their hands, halfway between the hallway and the door out of his sister's apartment. He thought about smiling to set them at ease, the way he used to do, and saying 'Please, just give me a moment,' which they couldn't possibly deny him; but smiles seemed so pointless. He didn't try.

     "Now," he told them in the same blank voice he'd used for everything else.

     They set the furniture down, waving at the people in the bedroom to follow, and every person exited from every corner of the apartment. The last one shut the door behind him. They left Subaru alone with his stillness. For a minute, or maybe two, he stood there without looking at the picture slowly being crushed in his fist. He couldn't count how many minutes after that he spent with his face in his hands, mindless of the harsh edges of the crumpled photo paper, tears rolling from his eyes while he waited for there to be nothing left.

~//~

     The boy had decided to cry. Such an ordinary thing, to be overcome by photographs. Seishirou glanced away from Subaru-kun's image reflected on the pond. He took a cigarette from the pack on the ashtray beside him on the stone steps of his mother's house. The sleeve of his yukata fell to his elbow as he lit it, inhaling and exhaling again to see the sun catch on the fading white cloud of smoke. It was a beautiful day, as far as standards of beauty went for days -- full of colors. Even in Tokyo the sun would be shining, but Subaru-kun wouldn't notice. The boy might remember today as rainy. Memory was so subjective, and so much of Subaru-kun's mourning was so very ordinary in everything except degree. The most interesting thing was the way he'd stopped using Hokuto-chan's name. It was always, "My sister, my sister," now. Even that was a symptom of an ordinary pain at having lost someone he cherished.

     If there was nothing to set Subaru-kun apart from the rest of humanity, his life was forfeit. These past few weeks, following Lady Sumeragi's interruption as they settled their bet, the only question in Seishirou's mind had been whether he should wait to collect until the family had loosened Subaru-kun's leash, or whether he should simply go on his way -- take Subaru-kun's life if the boy ever woke up from his broken heart and happened to cross his path again, but otherwise let well enough alone. He'd fairly settled on letting well enough alone when Hokuto-chan had found him.

     "There's no such thing as a person for whom loving another person is wrong."

     The words changed nothing about the taste of tobacco smoke on his tongue or the steady pulse in his blood. Hokuto-chan had said them as if he thought the things he'd done had made him feel unworthy of the emotion. As if she'd seen something in him that he was wilfully denying, and that meant he'd been mistaken about Subaru-kun. He should have felt more certain that she was deluding herself. How many times had he heard people talk about affection as a universal right and felt it pass his heart like water over stones? But Hokuto-chan's conviction disturbed him. That time, he'd been the water, and she striking him had been the stone, and he had to ask himself what made those words, at that time, strike true.

     He'd been lazy, he decided. To settle his curiosity, he had to allow the chance that he'd always been capable of love. That something inside him had held that potential all along, but might, in him, present different symptoms than the ones he knew. It was no different from yeast, making beer when you mix it with mash, but making bread rise when you mix it with dough. He'd defined himself as someone who didn't love, and that was no way to get an honest answer to his question. As long as Subaru-kun didn't change him, everything he could feel was already something he'd decided wasn't love.

     How to decide if Subaru-kun inspired a feeling whose nature he couldn't take for granted. If he could say the boy was special to him in some utterly undefined fashion, even though Subaru-kun was an epitome of human nature, not distinct from humanity in any sense that reason could explain. It was worse than a riddle, where at least he knew there was something to find. Hokuto-chan might have been mistaken -- not in a general sense, perhaps, but about what she'd implied she saw him denying. So he'd come back here, to the yard where his mother had told him she'd known she loved him the moment she'd met him. If any change of scenery could help him settle his puzzle, it would be this place.

     He stubbed out the end of his cigarette in the ashtray, breathing out the last of the smoke. A nature-scented breeze blew its tendrils over the pond, where one of the larger koi swam under the image of Subaru-kun still crying in Hokuto-chan's former apartment. Subaru-kun leaving his gloves off had made it so easy to scry on him, there was almost no sport to it. The Sumeragi had accepted the Sakurazukamori's personal marks as part of himself, so wards placed on a building meant nothing. Perhaps it was an invitation -- "Come find me before I find you". Little chance he'd approach now, when Lady Sumeragi had the boy watched day and night. A bit of clean-up wasn't worth walking into an ambush.

     If he hadn't known about Subaru-kun's commitment to killing him, Seishirou might have thought those bare hands were the boy's way of saying, "I still want you in my life". He might have believed Subaru-kun naive enough to cling to his kindly doctor. Hadn't Subaru-kun taken leave of his senses for a month because it was too hard to let go? Seishirou could see it in his mind's eye, the way he would have let Subaru-kun sob against his shoulder during the months when his prey would have sought comfort in his arms instead of comfort in his death. He'd done it before. He'd never do it again.

     You'd think a boy like that could've found someone else to hold him instead of ordering everybody out so he could cry in an empty room. After all, it'd been Subaru-kun who'd come to him when the world started to break his gentle heart, needing someone to tell him that everything would be all right. There must have been someone else before they'd begun their year.

     Well. That would have been Hokuto-chan. That was unfortunate, but time healed, and so on. Someone like Subaru-kun wouldn't stay lonely--

     He froze with an image in his head: a suddenly repugnant image of someone like the man he'd pretended to be, stepping in to fill the vacancy he'd left. That was interesting. He very distinctly, very viscerally, wanted that to never happen. The urge filled him to crush the breath out of that non-existent other's throat while Subaru-kun watched, to circle those fingers that had just killed the lover around Subaru-kun's own throat.

     The boy's pulse would speed under his fingertips. It always had.

     His disquiet from the thought of being replaced pushed its way up his spine as he balked at his own memories, that he recalled a detail like that. He remembered _feeling satisfaction_ at Subaru-kun's heart beating faster when they'd touched, even those times he'd knocked his prey unconscious to take care of trouble. Back then, he'd laughed at the simple, animal reactions of a teenage boy. He couldn't laugh at tension in his muscles when memories told Seishirou just which shuddering gasp his Subaru-kun would make if he whispered, "You will always be mine," before the boy answered, "Yes, Seishirou-san..."

     Shaking the fantasy out of his mind, Seishirou squeezed his hand into a fist around the water where Subaru-kun was reflected, blotting out his image. He was deluding himself. The real Subaru-kun had sworn to kill him. There would be no trembling if he paid a visit. He'd see cold, righteous fury that would refuse to be denied. The capacity for that had surged out of Subaru-kun's soul from time to time. And because it was _him_ , that fury would be so much stronger, so much more pure.

     Maybe he didn't have to worry about Subaru-kun finding a lover after all.

     Maybe Subaru-kun would actually manage to kill him. He could see the appeal.

     Although thanks to Hokuto-chan he'd never feel Subaru-kun's heart's blood slick on his fingers, filling the air with its metallic stink, never feel Subaru-kun's last impaled breath, life sinking away... but what a sight it would be, his own blood on Subaru-kun's hand, making tiny, crossing streams over paper-pale skin. He'd see the first shock of his kind-hearted prey learning what it meant to kill, that he was capable of it. Subaru-kun would never be prepared for that. Such a sweet, naive soul, Seishirou thought with a smile, drawing his hand back from the water.

     He could be content if that was the pattern their lives would follow.

     Seishirou dried his hand on the folds of his yukata. It was odd, and somewhat fascinating, that clear water could make the bold blue of the cloth turn dark, at least until it evaporated, yet white would stay white, unless there were some kind of pigment in the water. While he watched his handprint spread and lighten, he considered whether he should take a walk, or put together lunch, then come back sometime after Subaru-kun had finished crying to think about his questions some more. It was pitiful to watch him like this, in a way that seeing Subaru-kun cry in his arms until he fell asleep had never managed to be.

     But he took one last glance at the scrying spell anyway. The image of Subaru-kun on the water wasn't crying now. Seishirou leaned over the pond for a closer look, and saw the boy standing straight with his red, swollen eyes shut gently, breathing in perfect calm. When Subaru-kun looked up, there was no hint of a sob, just an expression as stark as an arctic winter as he threw a crumpled photograph to the ground at his feet and walked away to blow his nose. Something about this steadiness was unlike the control that Subaru-kun had wrapped himself in ever since he'd woken up. It reminded Seishirou of the untamed Subaru-kun he'd seen on those few occasions when some human had been stupid enough to truly offend.

     With absolute certainty, Seishirou looked at the young onmyouji and knew he'd never see tears in those eyes again. This Subaru-kun was holding nothing back. Had he actually decided -- _decided_ , and managed -- to cry until his sorrow was so stripped bare that there were no tears left to control? His dear grandmother wouldn't like that much.

     It had left him pretty, though. Even when the boy had succumbed to wildness before, he'd fallen more into the cute mold, but this transformation had distinctly made him _pretty_ , except for the red eyes and sodden cheeks. Maybe that would stop his future clients from questioning his abilities, given that he suddenly looked so much less like a child.

     The question of why he'd done it, in the middle of...

     Time seemed to freeze as Subaru-kun strode back to the desk, took up the photo album he'd abandoned, and tore out another picture with professional efficiency. He threw it on the floor beside the first, then flipped the page to tear out a third. Not every picture in the album, of course. Photographs of Hokuto-chan posing next to statues or Subaru-kun hiding behind his hat stayed in their places. Only the ones showing their bespectacled veterinarian friend went in the growing pile at Subaru-kun's feet. When he'd flipped the last page in the blue album, he pulled out the pink one next in line and worked his way through.

     Seeing himself torn out of Subaru-kun's past, by Subaru-kun's hand, triggered a feeling Seishirou couldn't name, but it had a physical shock, and it wasn't pleasant. And before he could even consider understanding his reaction, he thought of what an onmyouji like Subaru-kun could do with a single photograph, let alone twenty or more. Seishirou had never objected to Hokuto-chan bringing out a camera, because Subaru-kun never would have used his image for a curse... but that was before. Could he have changed that much?

     Options ran through Seishirou's mind with razor clarity. This house and its garden were protected with some of the strongest wards his mother had been capable of, which would repel any attack he'd seen Subaru-kun produce before this. That didn't guarantee safety from whatever Subaru-kun thought he was doing now. Summoning his shikigami to intercept if need be, Seishirou worked a protection spell on his own person. But if he repelled an attack while Subaru-kun was in this state, the backlash might kill him. Hokuto-chan's old apartment was barely warded at all, only fortified against incidental disturbances from local spirits...

     There was no one there to stop him. This was why Subaru-kun had told all of his assistants to leave. This was why he'd cried himself hollow? But for Subaru-kun, or himself, to die this way... It wasn't good enough for _them_. Not like this.

     But he couldn't redirect the curse instead, and let Subaru-kun think that coming at him _like this_ , from a distance, impersonal and off-the-cuff, could ever be acceptable.

     The boy's motion slowed. One single picture he pulled more carefully from its page, freeing it without tearing any corners or adding any creases -- a rare portrait with all three of their faces. Subaru-kun set that one on the desk, as far towards the corner as his arm would reach, and set to tearing out the rest of the pictures with just as much deliberateness as before -- although maybe, Seishirou thought, a little less vigor. A breath Seishirou hadn't realized he was holding escaped from his lungs. This wasn't going to be a curse, and neither of them were going to die in such an unceremonious fashion. He wasn't sure how he knew that, but it was true.

     Seishirou turned to the hawk he'd summoned to his hand, who was looking back at him with his usual lack of nonsense. "What do you think he's doing, Nandarou?"

     His shikigami screamed like a hungry ghost, as if to ask why Seishirou had called him if there was nothing of consequence to which he'd need attend, then he stretched his wings and took off for a turn about the garden.

     "I guess I'll see. Won't I, Subaru-kun?"

     Five albums were piled up by the time he was done. The litter of pictures on the floor was perhaps the only collection of images with his face in it in this entire country. His childhood had hardly involved sentimental documentation, and if his work ever made the news, he never made the news with it. The sum visual record of his life might reside in those few score photographs at Subaru-kun's feet. And as Subaru-kun brought two fingers to his lips, murmuring an indistinct shingon, the pile burst into flame.

     The fire didn't merely char the paper. It started as a thin column and expanded toward the edge, leaving a fine dust behind on the unscarred floor. If there had been any malice in the act, any hint of a curse towards him, Seishirou would have been able to feel it through the connection he'd built, but all he sensed was Subaru-kun willing the complete destruction of the photographs themselves. Nothing but the pictures.

     He was destroying the evidence that there had ever been a man he and Hokuto-chan had known. No one would have a face for the man who had disappeared from the hospital room where Subaru-kun had been found, catatonic, arm broken. He'd destroyed his own hospital records, of course, and records for his old veterinary practice, but if the authorities went to the Sumeragi family for any reason... If Lady Sumeragi went through those albums to find the Sakurazukamori, by now having realized how close he'd been for so long...

     There would be nothing to find.

     That was how serious the boy was about seeing him die by no hands but his own.

     Seishirou smiled, lighting another cigarette and letting the smell add dimension to the sight of the burning pictures. "There is such a thing as being too kind, Subaru-kun."

~//~

     " _On birodakya yakisha jihataei sowaka. On birodakya yakisha jihataei sowaka. On birodakya yakisha jihataei sowaka..._ "

     The flames flared out at the edge of the pile, leaving a fine, gray-white ash like dust on the ground where all of Seishirou-san's photographs had been. Their form was destroyed beyond any hope of physical recovery. His spell would stop any attempt to recover their contents by less physical means. He would be like a ghost who left no footprints, except for the marks he'd made on Subaru himself. Everything that needed to be settled was between them -- just them, no one else. No one would interfere, no matter how well intentioned the attempt.

     The world was free to forget them now. It'd be easy enough, in Tokyo, to forget a life.

     Subaru picked up the one photograph he'd set aside -- his sister in one of her tamer outfits, him in that silly old hat, Seishirou-san's hands on both their shoulders and a look in his eyes where Subaru could almost see the secrets they were hiding. In this picture, unlike so many fake smiles, Seishirou-san seemed to be thinking, "If you only knew..." From the calm floor of his heart, Subaru wondered what Seishirou-san would say if _he_ only knew that, moment by moment, Subaru was growing certain that what he'd loved hadn't been the illusion.

     Probably nothing. Seishirou-san wouldn't care.

     His beeper pinged, like he'd expected it would, and Subaru slid his last picture of the two people he'd loved more than anyone into the pocket inside his left lapel, because he couldn't forget. He'd never forget.

     From the phone hanging on the wall of his sister's kitchenette, he dialed the number showing on his beeper. The line picked up on the other end before the first ring was over.

     "Good afternoon, Grandmother."

     "Subaru-san..."

     "Yes, I asked them to leave."

     "They're with you to help with whatever you need."

     To watch him, Subaru interpreted, and to make sure he didn't do anything dangerous.

     "... I needed a moment alone."

     "Subaru-san, you know that if you ever want someone to talk--"

     "There's nothing to say."

     He was done having conversations where Grandmother asked him to think about what he was doing, where she said she didn't want to see him killed or becoming a killer, where she told him he'd look back on this with regret. He was done telling her his decision was made.

     "Was there anything else, Grandmother?"

     "Subaru-san. What did you do?"

     "... It's nothing. I'm fine."

     He hung up the phone before she could say another word. A few minutes later, his assistants outside knocked on the door.

     "Pardon us..." one of them called out.

     "It's all right. You can come in now."


End file.
